Marc’s grandfather and  mother were Indians. He was born in Pune, and schooled in Pune and Germany. After school got done, he came back for a year to work at a farm in Mahableshwar. In this one year he realised the need for an education and so he went back to do his Masters. Carried on with his PhD, which given that it was the 1980’s was in a very interesting area – IT in agriculture. Most of the professors who attended his defence were skeptical, but not his guide. Marc quotes his guide: ‘Need people who are crazy enough in the village to climb the church tower – can at least look beyond the village then.’

In the early 90s, Marc teamed up with a few friends to start an IT company. He proposed to his partners that he could handle the programming part sitting in India. They accepted, so he was back to his favorite city – Pune. Marc finds Indians more welcoming, more ready to experiment, and the weather much better than the dreary stuff that Deutschland had to offer. The company did well. The partners sold out to a bigger company in 2006. Part of those funds, 10 crores, were invested in Green Tokri. Marc had already been a weekend farmer from 2001 onwards – and fertilizers seem to be running in his veins. It has been a long haul, annual turnover today is still only 1.2 cr, but growing at 20% a year.

Green Tokri decided to specialize in Salads. Why Salads? Chances of undercutting by other farmers is less. Into affordable salads – not just for the top 1% of Pune’s population. And salads that are not grown between railway tracks – so you don’t need to sterilize them. Even today salads form 70% of Green Tokri’s business. But Benedict, Marc’s wife recommended diversification. Processed food manufacturing helps take care of fluctuations in production. So now Green Tokri also does processed food like dressings. The farm has more fruits now – as a result it is less of monoculture.

Green Tokri is still relatively small – It is a 50 people company, with 30 people employed at the 3 farms in Saswad, about 25 km away from Pune. In 20 km time travel of 500 years is achieved. The difference in culture was a big challenge for Marc when he became a full timer at Green Tokri. What he found funny was the backward bending supply of labour. No one wants to do overtime, in spite of all his employees being shareholders in the company. The 30 farm employees are basically from just 3 families – so there is very good teamwork. The big problems start when there are marriages in any of the family – which leads to mass absenteeism!

Saswad is in rain shadow region – so water is a problem. The land is barren – the insects also love the salads – there doesn’t seem to be too much choice around, especially in summers. Marc aimed to be an organic farmer, but found it to be difficult, so he uses a minimal levels of fertilizers and pesticides. One of his biggest learnings has been from one of his biggest failures – a 1.7 cr liter water tank, which stores water only when it is not needed – and in the summers is absolutely dry. So Green Tokri is at the forefront of water optimization. The stats for water efficiency in agriculture go something like this: For 1 kg of salad – conventional agriculture requires 3,000 ltr; Drip irrigation requires 300 ltr and Hydroponics requires 38 ltr. So the company uses hydroponic cultivation today.

Marc believes that marketing is his Achilles heel. So he now spends 3 days every week in Pune to hit the market and network. As a part of his marketing plan, he has also got into agro-tourism, where customers are invited to the farm to spend a day. He even used to get them to harvest their own salads – but that experiment was not very fruitful. Customers are sold the produce through 3 channels – direct to customer, modern retail and institutional. Mark finds retail the best for getting instatenous feedback. Also the first customer out of Pune has been signed up recently – in Mumbai

Marc’s business philosophy – always have partners. Avoid banks, if possible. (Though he countered that with an example of a competitor of his in the IT business – who took on a much larger bank loan that ITB, Mark’s company. He also sold out his company – but at a valuation which was 10 times that of ITB.) His advice for entrepreneurs with multiple businesses – Each business needs to live by itself. Marc runs a regular internship program, which he finds very beneficial – since it allows others to question his practices. And finally Marc feels that if were to start all over again – would invest in renewables. Solar electricity is happening at Saswad this year..